Zelda Fitzgerald: Her Voice in Paradise

by Sally Cline

  12 FSF to ZSF, 26 Apr. 1934, Life in Letters, pp. 256–7.

  13 ZSF, Phipps Clinic, Feb.–Mar. 1934, Milford, Zelda, p. 286.

  14 Ibid.

  15 As in ‘Babylon Revisited’. Mayfield, Exiles, pp. 211–12.

  16 It is the image of his father as moral touchstone which Scott uses for the ‘honor, courtesy and courage’ by which Dick Diver holds himself together until he is forced to realize he has betrayed those very qualities.

  17 Wilson to Malcolm Cowley, 1951, Wilson, Letters on Literature and Politics, p. 254.

  18 FSF, General Plan and Sketch for Tender Is The Night.

  19 John Peale Bishop to FSF, Dec. 1933/Jan. 1934, PUL.

  20 Robert Benchley to FSF, 29 Apr. 1934, reproduced in Romantic Egoists, ed. Bruccoli et al., p. 201.

  21 Thomas Wolfe to FSF, Mar. 1934, reproduced in ibid., p. 201.

  22 Archie MacLeish to FSF, reproduced in ibid., p. 200.

  23 Dr C. J. Slocum, born Rhode Island 1873, trained at Albany.

  24 This became ‘Show Mr and Mrs F. to Number –’, published in Esquire, May–June 1934.

  25 The book was of course Tender Is The Night. ZSF to FSF, two letters, c. Mar. (author’s dating) 1934.

  26 Slocum to FSF, 19 Mar. 1934, CO745, Box 1, Folder 1, PUL.

  27 FSF to Slocum, 22 Mar. 1934; Slocum to FSF, 19 Mar. 1934, ibid.

  28 ZSF to FSF, c. Mar. (author’s dating) 1934, CO187, Box 44, Folder 34, PUL; telegram, 12 Mar. 1934.

  29 Slocum to FSF, 26 Mar. 1934, CO745, Box 1, Folder 1, PUL. Zelda’s schedule had been: 7.30 bath; 8.00 breakfast; 9.00–10.00 writing; 10.30–1.00 craft-painting; 1.00–1.30 lunch; 1.30–5.30 outdoor activities – golf, tennis, swimming, riding; 5.30–6.00 prepare for dinner; 6.00–6.30 dinner; 6.30–7.00 rest; 7.00–7.30 bridge, drawing, painting, reading; 9.30–10.00 room and bed (schedule not followed Saturday or Sunday). Slocum insisted on inserting rest periods instead of mental activities.

  30 ZSF to FSF, Mar. 1934; Apr. (author’s dating) 1934, CO187, Box 44, Folders 35, 24, PUL.

  31 Cary Ross to FSF, 26 Aug. 1932, CO187, Box 53, Folder 9, PUL. Ross, a Yale graduate and would-be poet whom Fitzgerald had mentored, had stayed with Stieglitz at Lake George in 1932.

  32 ZSF to FSF, c. early Mar. 1934.

  33 ZSF to FSF, Mar. 1934, ZSF, Collected Writings, p. 470.

  34 Mayfield, Exiles, p. 208.

  35 Hines was Associate Professor of Anatomy at Johns Hopkins Medical School.

  36 I agree with Kendall Taylor’s suggestion that Zelda’s retreat into madness was the way she enabled herself to ‘breathe freely’. Sometimes Madness, p. 13.

  37 FSF to Slocum, 22 Mar. 1934, CO745, Box 1, Folder 1, PUL.

  38 Zelda recalled Diaghilev’s theory that art should shock the emotions. ‘A person certainly could not walk about that exhibition and maintain any dormant feelings.’ ZSF, letter about the O’Keeffe exhibition at An American Place, Feb./Mar. 1934, CO183, Box 6, Folder 6, PUL; ZSF. ‘Show Mr and Mrs F. to Number –’, Collected Writings, p. 431.

  39 It is possible also to link the way Zelda filled the picture plane with luminous watercolour washes, which seem to float freely through her pictures without defining lines, to her comment about Paris when she was already ill but had not recognized it: ‘there was a new signifigance to everything: stations and streets and façades of buildings – colors were infinite, part of the air, and not restricted by the lines that encompassed them and lines were free of the masses they held’. ZSF to FSF, late summer 1930, CO187, Box 42, Folder 52, PUL.

  40 Antheriums was probably painted the year before her exhibition. Zelda had written Dr Rennie a series of letters from Craig House decorated with writhing swelling flower shapes, in colours of decayed flesh. They too showed the anthropomorphic potent aura of O’Keeffe’s flowers. Montgomery art dealer Louise Brooks later described Zelda’s Japanese Magnolias, drawn at this time, with its bubbles and foetus shapes as looking ‘like an abortion’ (Brooks to Carolyn Shafer, interview, 27 Aug. 1993). Impasto is paint applied thickly so that the brush marks are evident. One of Zelda’s nurses at Highland Hospital, Mary Parker, saw this kind of brushwork as an extension of her illness. She said it was like a visual interpretation of the term ‘ruminating’ in psychiatry. ‘It’s going over and over things in your head. Her painting was like that to me – using the brush over and over’ (Parker to Shafer, interview, 15 July 1993). Shafer is very informative about the relationship between O’Keeffe and Zelda as painters. Shafer, ‘To Spread a Human Aspiration’, 1994.

  41 Original list of paintings: 1. White Anemones (priced at $250); 2. Red Poppies ($200); 3. White Roses ($200); 4. Laurel ($150); 5. Vestibule ($300); 6. Dancer ($175); 7. Chinese Theater ($200); 8. Spectacle ($300); 9. Football ($250); 10. Chopin ($125); 11. Afternoon ($175); 12. Portrait in Thorns ($200); 13. Portrait of a Russian ($200). Additional paintings: 14. Nude ($300); 15. Russian Stable ($175); 16. Tulips; 17. Ballet Figures ($250). Original list of drawings: 1. Spring in the Country ($15); 2. The Plaid Shirt ($15); 3. The Cornet Player ($15); 4. Ferns ($15); 5. Au Claire [sic] de la Lune ($15); 6. Forest Fire; 7. Girl on a Flying Trapeze ($15); 8. Two Figures ($15); 9. Red Death ($15); 10. La Nature ($15); 11. Etude Arabesque; 12. Two People ($25); 13. Feuété ($25); 14. Pallas Athene ($50); 15. Study of Figures (pencil, $12). Additional drawings: 16. Crossing Roses; 17. Diving Platform ($15); 18. Red Devil ($15). The additional paintings and drawings may have been those shown separately at the Algonquin.

  42 Diving Platform is sometimes called Swimmer on a Ladder.

  43 Mabel Dodge Luhan sent Ross from New Mexico a bid for Portrait in Thorns, but when her offer was refused because Zelda had said earlier she did not want to sell it, she bought Red Death. Though Scott and Ross could have done with another large sale, Portrait in Thorns was never sold. Cary Ross to FSF, 4 May 1934, CO187, Box 53, Folder 9, PUL.

  44 Seldes, typed note, 12 Sep. 1933.

  45 Gerald Murphy to Milford, 2 Mar. 1964, Milford, Zelda, p. 290. Chinese Theater is also known as Chinese Acrobats.

  46 ZSF to FSF, c. Apr. 1934.

  47 Honoria Murphy Donnelly, conversations with the author, summer 1998 and 1999. When Dick Knight visited Zelda in Montgomery in 1940 he was able to buy it. James K. Moody, current owner of the painting, believes it was left in the gallery and was later shipped to Montgomery. According to Moody, when Knight died of alcohol poisoning in 1948 his ex-wife, from whom he was divorced in 1940, put his possessions in storage. After her death her two daughters gave the painting to her executor godson Claude Kemper, who sold the painting to Sotheby’s, New York. They sold it to Moody. Kemper told Moody that Knight’s wife knew how enamoured Richard was of Zelda and that on several occasions he broke away to go and see her (James Moody in conversation with the author, 28 Nov. 1999 and 27 Aug. 2001).

  48 Tom Daniels lived near Scott in St Paul, gave him rides to St Paul Academy and attended the Baker dancing classes with him. He carried the manuscript of This Side of Paradise to Scribner’s.

  49 Jane O’Connell and Mr A. K. Mills, who had helped put the exhibition together, received two drawings, each valued at $25: Two People and Feuété (which is possibly a pun on the ballet term Fouetté).

  50 Arabesque is listed in 1942 at Zelda’s exhibition of watercolours and drawings at Montgomery Women’s Club.

  51 Dorothy Parker to Milford, 26 Aug. 1964, Milford, Zelda, pp. 290–1.

  52 John Biggs Jnr to Milford, 9 June 1963, ibid., p. 291.

  53 James Thurber, ‘Scott in Thorns’, The Reporter, 17 Apr. 1951.

  54 Parker attempted suicide when her affair with Charles MacArthur broke up.

  55 Time, 9 Apr. 1934.

  56 New York Post, 3 Apr. 1934.

  57 On 30 April Zelda was allowed to return to New York with a nurse to see the last day of her exhibition.

  58 ZSF to FSF, c. 1 Apr. (author’s dating) 1934, CO187, Box 44, Folder 29, PUL. She reminded him of the mass of stuff she had written and wondered if Esquire might
take some of it. Even though his own novel was due out 12 April he was still nervous about her writing.

  59 FSF to Slocum, 8 Apr. 1934; Slocum to FSF, 11 Apr. 1934, CO745, Box 1, Folder 1, PUL.

  60 ZSF to FSF, two letters, Apr. 1934 (author’s dating), CO187, Box 44, Folders 24, 41, PUL.

  61 ZSF to FSF, Apr/May 1934, CO187, Box 44, Folder 46, PUL.

  62 Malcolm Cowley, review of Tender, The New Republic, 6 June 1934.

  63 Quoted in Mellow, Invented Lives, p. 418.

  64 Donnelly and Billings, Sara and Gerald, p. 38. Scott used other friends as models for the Divers’ circle. Ring Lardner and Charlie MacArthur became Abe North. Nicole’s acid sister Baby Warren was based on Scott’s disapproving sister-in-law Rosalind Smith and Sara Murphy’s sharp-tongued sister Hoytie, while Rosemary Hoyt, the naïve young actress who is infatuated by Dick, was based on Lois Moran and possibly also on Mary Hay. According to Scott’s notes for the novel Barban was based on a combination of Edouard Jozan, Mario Braggiotti, Tommy Hitchcock and two Princetonians, Percy Pyne and Denny Holden. Bruccoli and other critics believe Barban was also based on Ernest Hemingway though Scott did not list him.

  65 Murphy finally gave up all painting after the deaths of both his sons.

  66 Sara Murphy to FSF, 1934, CO187, Box 51, Folder 15, PUL.

  67 Donnelly and Billings, Sara and Gerald, p. 43.

  68 Gerald Murphy to FSF, 31 Dec. 1935, co187, Box 51, Folder 13, PUL.

  69 FSF to EH, 10 May 1934, J. F. Kennedy Library.

  70 EH to MP, 30 Apr. 1934, The Only Thing That Counts.

  71 Hemingway later thought Tender Is The Night was excellent, of a higher standard than anything Scott had written before. He did wonder however whether Scott’s writing career might be over. He sent via Perkins affectionate greetings to Scott with the assurance that the novel was threateningly good.

  72 FSF to Mencken, 23 Apr. 1934, PUL, lent by Enoch Pratt Free Library; Mencken to FSF, 26 Apr. 1934.

  73 ZSF to FSF, Apr. 1934; May 1934 (author’s dating), CO187, Box 44, Folders 41, 46, PUL.

  74 ZSF, ‘Auction – Model 1934’, Collected Writings, p. 438.

  75 Sheppard Pratt, founded as Sheppard Asylum in 1853, was given an influx of funds five years later by Enoch Pratt, a rich railroad and steamship owner. It was one of the USA’s oldest mental hospitals, housing 500 patients in 1934. In 1931 6 per cent of its patients were hospitalized free; in 1932 198 of its 271 patients paid less than the full fees, which averaged $38 per week. Most full-fee-paying patients came from the South like Zelda because the Deep South had few private mental hospitals.

  76 ZSF to FSF, c. Apr. 1934 (author’s dating); c. Apr./May 1934 (author’s dating), CO187, Box 44, Folders 42, 46, PUL.

  77 Mayfield, Exiles, p. 214. Mayfield was herself a patient there later and her own descriptions of the hospital and her experiences (Mayfield Collection, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa) precisely match the horror of Zelda’s. Mayfield believed Zelda had been ‘ground down by Scott and the doctors’, that if she had been allowed to leave, to write and paint, she could have survived mentally.

  78 Taylor, Sometimes Madness, p. 197.

  79 ZSF to FSF, c. Oct. 1934.

  80 ZSF to FSF, summer 1934: c. June (author’s dating) 1934; c. June (author’s dating) 1934, CO187, Box 44, Folders 49, 26, 47, PUL.

  81 ZSF to Dr Elgin and other medical staff, Sheppard Pratt, 1934. Dr William Elgin was born in Cincinnati in 1905, graduated from Washington and Lee University in Virginia, and took his medical degree at Johns Hopkins.

  82 ZSF to FSF, undated fragment (author’s dating summer 1934), CO187, Box 41, Folder 42, PUL.

  83 Taylor, Sometimes Madness, p. 300.

  84 ZSF to FSF, late May/June 1934, CO187, Box 44, Folder 47, PUL.

  85 Mayfield, Exiles, p. 275.

  86 FSF, Notebooks, No. 1362.

  87 Quoted in Mellow, Invented Lives, p. 429.

  88 Dr Murdoch (Mayfield gives his name as Kenneth Murdock), a graduate of Nebraska Medical School and a Commonwealth Fellow in Psychiatry at Colorado Psychopathic Hospital, joined Sheppard Pratt in 1930 and soon became its third director. He also taught psychiatry at the University of Maryland.

  89 ZSF to FSF, late May 1934, CO187, Box 44, Folder 47, PUL.

  90 FSF to Elgin, 21 May 1934, CO187, Box 40, Folder 4, PUL.

  91 FSF to MP, 13 June 1934. His proposed table of contents began with a 500-word introduction by him. The first section, ‘Eight Women’, would contain Zelda’s stories (26, 250 words). The second section, ‘Three Fables’ (5,000 words), would include ‘The Drought and the Flood’, ‘A Workman’ and ‘The House’. The third section, ‘Recapitulation’ (5,000 words), would include ‘Show Mr and Mrs F. –’ and ‘Auction –’ Model 1934’ (total approximately 50,000 words).

  92 FSF to Rosalind Sayre Smith, 19 July 1934, CO187, Box 53, Folder 14A, PUL.

  93 FSF to Rosalind Sayre Smith, 16 Aug. 1934, ibid.

  94 Quoted in Aaron Latham, Crazy Sundays: F. Scott Fitzgerald in Hollywood, Viking Press, New York, 1971, p. 183.

  95 FSF to Stein, 29 Dec. 1934, Yale University. Isabel Owens was there when Zelda refused to hand over her paintings. Owens said ‘She made it stick too.’

  96 17 Mar. 1935 at Massachusetts General Hospital.

  97 Mencken to FSF, 30 May 1935, CO187, Box 51, PUL.

  CHAPTER 23

  Zelda was under a stone. She hardly spoke. That Scott’s health had been poor during the winter and spring passed her by. That he had left Baltimore for Tryon, Hendersonville and North Carolina several times was of little consequence.1 To his letter asking her what she needed, Zelda replied: ‘I don’t need anything at all except hope, which I can’t find by looking either backwards or forwards, so I suppose the thing is to shut my eyes.’2 Visiting her was like visiting a ghost. Half-remembering his world, she wrote: ‘I want you to be happy again with Scottie – some place where it is bright … and you can have some of the things you have worked so hard for … Please get well and love Scottie and find something to fill up your life –.’3 But by midsummer she no longer wrote to him.

  Scott had tried to fill up his life with new companions and desultory affairs. During summer 1935 in North Carolina he met Laura Guthrie Hearne, a Columbia Journalism School graduate and amateur psychic who told fortunes to guests at Asheville’s George Vanderbilt Hotel. Hired as Scott’s part-time secretary, she also became go-between and recorder of his affair with Beatrice Dance, a rich Texan, who like Scott was staying at the Grove Park Inn.4 Beatrice fell histrionically in love with Scott, who rapidly finished the affair by telling Dance that he was unable to abandon Zelda.5 Scott, ever self-serving, accustomed to purloining Zelda’s intimate letters, now sent Beatrice one of Zelda’s saddest to justify his ruthless rejection of her.

  Dearest and always

  Dearest Scott:

  I am sorry too that there should be nothing to greet you but an empty shell. The thought of the effort you have made over me, the suffering this nothing has cost would be unendurable to any save a completely vacuous mechanism. Had I any feelings they would all be bent in gratitude to you and in sorrow that of all my life there should not even be the smallest relic of the love and beauty that we started with to offer you at the end.

  You have been so good to me – and all I can say is that there was always that deeper current running through my heart: my life – you.

  You remember the roses in Kinneys yard … we crossed the street and said we loved the south. I thought of the south … thought I was part of the south … We were gold and happy all the way home.

  Now that there isn’t any more happiness and home is gone and there isn’t even any past and no emotions but those that were yours … – it is a shame that we should have met in harshness and coldness where there was once so much tenderness and so many dreams … I love you anyway – even if there isn’t any me or any love or even any life …

  Oh, Do-Do

  Do-Do –

&nbs
p; Zelda.6

  Scott spelt out the implications for Dance: ‘There are emotions just as important as ours running concurrently with them – and there is literally no standard in life other than a sense of duty.’7

  The rejected Beatrice was hospitalized with distress while Scott, lungs already inflamed by tuberculosis, went on an alcoholic bender until Dr Paul Ringer admitted him to hospital in Asheville as, in Rosalind’s words, a ‘floundering wreck’. Rosalind added later: ‘Poor devil! I always was sorry for him even while detesting him.’8 Minnie Sayre told Rosalind she was so crushed by Zelda’s hopelessness that she had to ‘[philosophize] herself into keeping cheerful’. After Rosalind had comforted the Sayres, she visited Zelda, who ‘was dressed in white and seemed very ethereal, somehow, like somebody not of this world’. Rosalind told Scott: ‘Most of the time … she was reproaching herself for having wrecked your life and having brought Scottie into the world … Her present condition was a great shock to me … and I feel discouraged about her.’ Zelda begged Rosalind to take her for a ride, but when Rosalind asked Dr Elgin he said Zelda was so dangerously ill he could not allow her out in a car for fear she would escape. ‘I pray’, wrote Rosalind, ‘that she will soon be quiet enough to have this little diversion from that horrible atmosphere in which she lives.’9

  Scott’s own diversions to avoid that ‘horrible atmosphere’ included a new friendship with twenty-nine-year-old writer Tony Buttitta, proprietor of Asheville’s Intimate Book Shop in the George Vanderbilt Hotel arcade. One night Buttitta heard a knock at his door.

  Standing outside was a tall blond chap in grey flannels who reminded me of a photo on a book jacket. ‘Where’s the Men’s Room?’ the guy said. ‘Why, upstairs’, I answered. ‘Well it’s loaded. Downstairs is loaded too. Find me one that isn’t loaded!’ I led him through the hotel garden, he tripped unsteadily through magnolias, jasmine and mimosa where he did his business. Then he stood under the moonlight and I knew. ‘You’re Scott Fitzgerald’, I said. ‘You have a romantic profile.’ He liked that. He’d crashed, been beaten down, so if someone recognized him, especially a fellow writer, he liked that. I told him I’d sold half a dozen of his books but I hadn’t sold hardly any. He didn’t believe he was important any more, but he needed other people to believe it.